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I disagree with everything you've just said.
We are nowhere near "resource constrained", the primary concerns with giving everyone First World/American lifestyles is energy and carbon emissions, both of which are solvable problems. Invest in nuclear, or continue waiting for renewables to be even more competitive (they already are, even without market subsidies), and then do one of the many forms of geoeningeering needed to deal with the climactic changes.
I see no fundamental barriers to drastically raising the global standard of living. Certainly none that can't be solved, or won't inevitably be solved.
In the specific case driving this subthread, which is giving everyone convenient private transportation, the binding constraint is not resources (electric cars charged from nuclear power are a thing) but geometry. There are only so many cars (both moving and parked - separate problems with different issues, both of which need to be solved to make car culture work) that can be in any given space at the same time, and the demand for space scales faster with the available space as the metro area population increases. Above a metro area population of about 100,000, you need to demolish any pre-car neighborhoods and purpose-build the whole city around car travel if you want it to not suck. Above a metro are population of about 5 million, there isn't room for enough more roads and suckage is inevitable.
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Quite right, one of the great things about our world is that matter is fungible. Once we dig up some iron and smelt it into steel, we can keep on using that steel, reforging and casting it. 20% of China's steel production is recycled from scrap metal.
I think a lot of people subconsciously fall into a video-game logic of 'once I exhaust that gold mine the gold is gone, have to find new gold deposit'. The gold is still there!
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